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It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!

Sorry guys rush out the door. I should of just not responded to the thread.Just got back with a long day with wife, kids and my in-laws.We drove out to the the Volvo car museum. I never was there and my father in-lawwanted to go out there to see the cars again and show the grandchildren them.We all had a wonderful time and then went out to Culver's for dinner and Custard:)

Now back to the PX5s. I only played around for the last hour with the unit.Still getting the hang of how to edit tones. Getting there and enjoying going through the 100 stage setting.There is so nice organ sounds to play with, but I was having the mostfun with the rhodes and clav sounds to be honest. Also I was goingover some pop ballads with the piano and strings stage settings and got lost just playing. So I guess that is a good sign. As far as gigging that is long past for me. Might use it to help out school for plays as in the past or for contemporary church mass.

I need to reread the manual on how to do the phase recordings tonight. I got lost trying to record one just before coming up here to the computer. Probably somethingsimple I'm missing.

All in all I am having fun with the unit. Hopefully on my next day off I canget it setup in my practice room to the monitors and hear how it sounds without using headphones. Also want to try recording some of my playing to a USB thumbdrive.

Shipping and packaging... excellent. Box arrived crisp and secure from Kraft, with their added accessories in a second box.

Audio quality... scared me, until I realized that the free Audio-Technica ATH-T22 headphones included with the Kraft "Bonus Pak" are worth exactly what I paid for them. Fortunately, Sennheiser 598 is arriving tomorrow. (I had one other set of cans that are way better than the freebies, but the cord is so short I have to either lean way left or dance over it while playing!)

Documentation... much more needed. The tutorial and user's guide are only marginally useful if you are trying to understand the architecture... but I'm sure that with huge popularity of this board there will be a lot more information soon. A good conceptual piece would be highly useful for beginners, along with some setup examples.

Keybed feel... even better touch than expected. Kind of a sharp thunk on release compared to my only real data point (RD-700SX), but it is uniform across all the keys. Key surface texture is nice, and they look good as well.

Aesthetics... Quite crisp and lightweight (an important feature for me in the boat, as well as anybody looking for portability). Surprising how good it feels for being well under half the weight of my last board. Panel legends are quite readable, and LEDs are non-intrusive. For such a lightweight box, the case is surprisingly stiff and secure... can probably take a few bumps in handling.

AP sound... still working on it (while figuring out the interface). Initial default had substantial sustain pedal noise and way more open-string resonance (sounded like all strings, not just harmonically related), but those are easily editable. Sound is little thin for my taste yet, but I'm still using those temporary headphones and am early in the learning curve, so it is too early to presume to judge. Long sustain, and my ear did not pick up any obvious looping or other artifacts.

Variety of sounds... huge, especially with all the layers and zones I haven't even figured out how to play with yet. As with my previous board, there are clearly some included tones that will be delicious standouts, and others that are "meh." I hear this is pretty much normal for all manufacturers...

Power and cabling... very nice. 12V barrel connector is right angle, not one of those fragile cylindrical ones, though I would still not want to give it a serious yank for fear of damaging the internal connector mounting. Switching power supply runs cool, and has its own cord (not a wall wart). The battery tray is very clever and will be real win for a lot of people.

User interface... too early to give any kind of detailed assessment, but it is nice to be able to use the knobs to quickly scroll items and tweak values in the editor. Not exactly self-explanatory (see above re documentation), but it looks like you can drill as deep as you want from the front panel. The LCD is small, so a lot of information is packed into a few pixels.

Upgradeability and interfacing... a huge win on this compared to most. It's MIDI class-compliant, so no drivers needed, and firmware upgrades are via front-panel USB stick.

Company support... with Mike here, probably awesome. This was a huge factor in the decision to purchase this unit (I even had pre-sale questions to a couple of other vendors go completely unanswered... can't imagine actually needing help!).

DISCLAIMER: I've only had this for a few hours, and have been mostly doing other things... but I wanted to share a few initial thoughts before they are displaced by work-arounds, tweaks, and the kind of added knowledge that makes it hard to remember what it was like when you first discovered something. Looking forward to finding out how to use the iPad with it (an app?), and will certainly be running Galaxy or other software piano at some point. Overall, I'm impressed at the cost/performance ratio, and it fits my lightweight application very well without also being a big compromise in quality.

Would it be helpful if I send you (off-list) a few of the questions that come up from the perspective of a new user? I have been a tech/documentation writer for ages, and might be able to help spot some areas where other newbies are likely to have questions... including the "overall concept" stuff.

Cheers, and I look forward to posting photos of the nautical installation!Steve

Interesting link ; - I was again impressed by the Numa Concert AP sound; pretty organic. The rest of the Numa sounds is...meh..

- The Artis example is unfortunately way to much into overdrive and compression to give a good judgement (at least I hope this isn't how it really sounds).

- Drawbar organ on PX5s seems pretty good ! AP is still a bit thin in the mid-high range to my taste, but that may be personal preference.

Oh, by the way - I think Casio did such a good job getting all these extra sound processing features into the PX, that they may have fallen into the pitfall of overdoing effects in the programming of the presets. Damper resonance and key off effects (Rhodes) etc , don't have to be that unnaturally obvious. Perhaps a bit more modest programming in the next update . Just an advice, I know how tempting it is to show the nice features you have build-in, but beauty is in the (small) details - not "in your face" . Of course you can change it, but nicely perfected factory presets would save a lot off time.

- Roland is again very nice classical SN AP sound (as long as you don't hit it too hard). Still like it a lot.

- Physis - very dynamic , but indeed its slight touch of this artificial pianoteq attack / mid sound. I wonder if it's a 'problem' when you play it yourself, because the connection and interaction with the sound is than so much more important than the last bit of realism. However to listen to it lacks this final touch of realism. But who's going to record a DP for a commercial classical music release...these DP's are mostly for playing yourself anyway. On stage - I think it doesn't matter much either ; other things are important there, like how the AP mixes with the other players and how it sticks through the noise the others and environment produce.

h, by the way - I think Casio did such a good job getting all these extra sound processing features into the PX, that they may have fallen into the pitfall of overdoing effects in the programming of the presets. Damper resonance and key off effects (Rhodes) etc , don't have to be that unnaturally obvious. Perhaps a bit more modest programming in the next update . Just an advice, I know how tempting it is to show the nice features you have build-in, but beauty is in the (small) details - not "in your face" . Of course you can change it, but nicely perfected factory presets would save a lot off time.

I can only guess this was at MusikMesse? They turned UP the effects for the purpose of their demos. Personally, I prefer some of them a little quiter, sometimes louder, it depends on what I'm playing. By default they're in the middle.

Thanks - that's very well possible of course. I once had listened to a demo unit of Kawai and had a similar experience - all the piano designer effects we're turned to eleven ! Sounded pretty bad, but when turned to normal all was well.

Sorry I overlooked the probability they exaggerated the effects on the show floor. Hope the factory presets are less 'overdone' ;-)

Nice overall package you guys created. Initial sales figures must be good. Are the organs realtime drawbar emulations by the way, of fixed samples settings of different organ characters ?

I know for a fact that they turned them up. They were asking me to make them as sound as possible for their demos....both damper effects and key off noise.

There are some Stage Settings that have some drawbar control, we will be creating downloable banks with more. In the case of the drawbar organs, we have a sample of a single drawbar that is transposed to properly emulate the pitch of different drawbars. Of course there are traditional organ samples too.

- Physis - very dynamic , but indeed its slight touch of this artificial pianoteq attack / mid sound. I wonder if it's a 'problem' when you play it yourself, because the connection and interaction with the sound is than so much more important than the last bit of realism. However to listen to it lacks this final touch of realism. But who's going to record a DP for a commercial classical music release...these DP's are mostly for playing yourself anyway. On stage - I think it doesn't matter much either ; other things are important there, like how the AP mixes with the other players and how it sticks through the noise the others and environment produce.

While this is mostly very true, however my question: are You speaking from Pinanoteq 4 or already from Pianoteq 4.5?

Hello:It's probably about time that I give you folks my first thoughts on the PX-5S...sorry for the delay...my studio has 100 clients that need time sensitive audio work done every month, we have 2 studio locations and the staff consists of me, myself and I. Two of the staff are constant slackers so I never seem to have enough time because I am always covering for them.

The PX-5S is just simply a great keyboard in terms of value, touch, sound, integration and portability. I have already commented on the great work that Mike and the rest of the Casio team is doing with the 5S which really brings added value to this rig but I do have to admit the 5S had me at: battery.In the early 80's I gigged with a Prophet 600 and then with an added Yamaha DX7 as marching keyboardist with a 250 member marching band playing in a large football stadium. I had a very interesting 3 bicycle wheel contraption strapped to me with the keyboard/s in a plexiglass housing to keep the rain off them. I had retractable power and audio lines going to a heavy duty cart which two people pushed around behind me that had giant 12 volt truck batteries, power inverters and powered PA speakers. This rig could certainly kick some decibels but it was converting DC power (batteries) to AC (for the speakers) and then back to DC for the keyboards. Not very efficient. Could have done a battery "mod" on the keyboards but couldn't afford to have that go sideways so I left well enough alone. At that time I really wished that pro keyboards came standard with a battery backup system...and 30 years later Casio finally did it.

OK....I am stalling here....and I know it...the actual reality is that I am having so much fun with this keyboard that all I have really done with it...is play it a lot...just the presets with small tweaks using the knobs. At this time...I am in no position to give it any kind a review because I haven't actually cracked into it's "engine" at all.

Mike's tip with sticking with the Stage Settings at first and then choosing "other ingredients" is really good and that's what I have done.

It's been a while since I had that feeling of playing a keyboard that for whatever reason is breaking new ground for what I use keyboards for. Some notable keyboards that I put in this category from the past that I still use today because of this fact are: Hohner Clavinet D6, Fender Rhodes, Prophet 5, Yamaha CP-70, Yamaha DX-7 and Yamaha Motif 8.

I can say at this point that the touch and action on this keyboard is extremely good for this price point. I am very particular on what kind of 88 key-keyboards I use for midi control in the studio depending upon what kind of parts I am playing.

Each one of these boards brings something different to the table in terms of touch and feel but the 5S definitely goes to the top of the class. It is amazing how tighter this keyboard feels over the the previous action in the PX-330 (a key action I actually like a lot). Once you get used to the "ivory touch" on the 5S...you kind of miss it when you go to other keyboards. I also shouldn't forget to say that the 5S is only 25 lbs.

Now lets talk polyphony. I have in the archives somewhere..the monophonic Korg synth.(can't remember the model off hand) that was multi-tracked to tape in the studio just to be able to play chords for the original NASA theme song. Now looking at the 5S's 256 note polyphony...is a game changer. I always check new keyboards to see how well they steal played notes when they get over their polyphony limit by holding down the sustain pedal. Haven't even thought about this with the 5S.

Some other little things I noted so far:- Whether you like the white color of the 5S or not (personally I really don't have any preference except I will note the fact that this keyboard stands out in the crowd and I would think that Casio doesn't really mind that at all) the black writing around the controls is very easy to read. All the back connection jacks are listed on the top which is very helpful.

- The power switch is very easily found on the top panel by the volume control....no more trying to reach it from the back or the side. It is a momentary switch which you actually have to hold a bit to turn the unit off...should help with accidentally turning the power off. Of course if the plug gets pulled you have the batteries to keep you going. I am using Eneloops 2 gens. rechargeable bats 1900mah + power rating 1.2V. AA's. The 5S seems to do OK with these...but I need to test how long they actually last. Manual mentions run time of 3-4 hours with headphones on ...we shall see. I wondered about the 5S accidentally being turn on in a gig bag but the 5S has a auto off function of 5 minutes when in battery mode if it is not being played (4 hours...if it is plugged into a AC socket)

OK...I started with this post with batteries and will end here with batteries. I will try to come back here and report more about this 5S later...but then again....maybe not because I will be to busy playing it.

p.s. I forgot to mention something I didn't like about the 5S...well....I thought the EQ's could be a little more robust..........never mind...that is being dealt with on the next firmware update that should be out soon.

disclaimer: I am not affiliated or work for Casio...but these days...it definitely sounds like a fun gig.

Now you sound like me. I just learned to use the audio recorder and have mostlybeen playing with the presets and just tinkering a little to with the stage settings.

I was scared to listen to myself, but I didn't sound to bad:)I'm getting the hang of the layout of the board. I still have to try the batteries.I think I'll do that after this post:)

I don't have a lot of equipment to compare the PX-5s to. I had a Alesis QS8 that Idonated to my kids school music department. They are still using it.I have a Studiologic VMK188plus that has been having velocity troubles with some keys and I decided I needed a keyboard with sounds again. This way I don't have to have the computer on and a VST running to play late at night. Just turn on the unit and play.Anyway, off to try out the batteries.

The unit takes 8 AA batteries. But it says only use alkaline and not NC rechargeables.I haven't tried it on batteries yet. Been having to much fun playing with it still.I have to sit down with the manual and really go thru this monster

I just noticed that the Apple wireless keyboard fits perfectly atop the right side of the PX-5S, with its little cylindrical battery-tube structure hanging over the back to keep it from sliding around.

I must admit I was initially disappointed by its looks but it kind of grows on me and I like it now, at least on the pictures. It might have something to do with a certain childhood memory I have about the first electronic keyboard I've ever played as a kid and that was a white Casio synth my cousin got as a present. I was so deeply impressed by all the sounds and effects that I may have developed a subconscious association between white color and good feeling

Gene - I know EXACTLY what you mean.I will freely admit I have a "prejustice"against Casio for just that reason.. I assosiate them with "toys" and not pro-level.

Why do I not feel the same way about Yamaha?They have plenty of toy keyboards out there too....

This is my problem tho, and this looks like a qualityinstrument so I may have to get over it so that I many just own soon!

Also, I noticed they don't put "C A S I O" on the backbut rather "Privia" - kinda of like Privia is the "BRAND", not Casio - kinda makes it seem like an "Acura" under the Honda banner. Hope that makes sense.

The Casio Privia line has been well regarded for some time now. I don't think many pros thought highly of Casio until the PX-330 was released. I think that model helped change many negative opinions about Casio and the Privia line. Truth is Privia has been a successful product for Casio going back to the PX-100 which I think was the first Privia. It also didn't hurt that they reorganized the musical instrument division and brought in people who know the business and have been around for decades. That's why your seeing products like the PX-5S.

I don't want to wait until August to get mine here i Scandinavia and am concidering ordering one from the states. This would mean I loose my waranty here and would have to send back and forth to the states if anything goes wrong.And that would be expensive.